The Labour Department (LD) announced today that it will hold the Building a Multicultural Workplace Job Fair at MacPherson Stadium in Mong Kok on Thursday and Friday, offering more than 2,300 vacancies.
The fair is jointly organised by the LD and the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment & Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) Ethnic Minorities Committee, with the Equal Opportunities Commission as the co-organiser.
It aims to enhance the employment opportunities of job seekers, including those from ethnic minorities, and promote the LD’s employment services.
About 50 organisations will participate in the fair, with around half of them setting up booths on-site and conducting on-the-spot recruitment each day.
The positions being offered include engineer, accountant, human resources officer, guest services officer, administrative assistant, clerk, aircraft maintenance mechanic trainee, railway technical trainee, technical manager, system analyst, equestrian assistant, barista, spa therapist, nail technician trainee and lifeguard.
The Correctional Services Department, the Fire Services Department, Police and the Immigration Department plan to set up counters to introduce their career opportunities and entry requirements.
In addition to providing on-site interpretation services in Hindi, Urdu and Nepali at the fair, the DAB Ethnic Minorities Committee will introduce its support services for people from ethnic minorities.
Furthermore, career talks on various professions will be held during the event on Thursday.
Around 93% of the vacancies at the fair are full-time jobs, with most of them offering monthly salaries ranging from $12,000 to $22,000.
Among the vacancies, about 90% require a Secondary 7 education level or below and around 66% are open to job seekers without relevant work experience.
Property related crime including house break-ins, shop theft and car theft have continued to decline considerably in South Australia, the latest crime statistics have revealed.
The May rolling year crime statistics reveal the total number of property related offences has decreased by eight per cent – or 7,604 offences – in the period with significant reductions in most offences within the category.
Robbery and related offences have also continued to fall with a 10 per cent decline in offences recorded in the period – 80 offences – which is the sixteenth successive decrease in offences within that category.
The May figures reveal aggravated robberies declined by 14 per cent – from 490 to 432 offences reported and non-aggravated robberies rose by three per cent – from 75 to 77 offences reported.
Within the property related offences category theft and related offences recorded a 10 per cent decline in the period with a reduction in 5,709 offences – from 56,630 to 50,921.
Car theft recorded a six per cent decline – from 3,725 to 3,513 offences – and theft from a vehicle recorded a 20 per cent drop in offences – from 9,567 to 7,639 offences. This followed similar falls in the previous three reporting periods.
Shop theft has continued to fall in South Australia as ongoing proactive operations targeting recidivist offenders pay dividends with a seven per cent decline in the May period when 1,224 fewer offences were reported – from 18,405 to 17,181 incidents. This is the seventh successive decline in reported offences.
House break-ins have also continued to decline with a 10 per cent decrease recorded in the May period – from 5,822 to 5,228 offences – or 594 fewer incidents reported. This followed an 11 per cent decrease in the April period, eight per cent in March and seven per cent in February.
Non-residential break-ins also showed another healthy decrease with 318 fewer offences reported – from 3,708 to 3,390. The nine per cent drop followed a seven per cent decline in the April period and five per cent reductions in March and February.
The May rolling year statistics reveal acts intended to cause injury, which includes serious assault resulting in injury and common assault, increased by four per cent from 23,546 to 24,428 incidents reported.
Within that category the number of assault police incidents reported decreased by four per cent -from 626 to 601 incidents.
Reported homicides have returned to traditional levels with 10 recorded in the rolling year period compared with 23 in the corresponding period. A similar number were reported in the March and April periods.
A Porirua poacher found with 619 pāua he intended to sell, has been sent to prison for 2 years and 6 months.
Ruteru Sufia (63) was sentenced in the Porirua District Court today on 4 charges under the Fisheries Act and one charge under the Fisheries (Amateur Fishing) Regulations, following a successful prosecution by the Ministry for Primary Industries. The Court also banned him from all forms of fishing for 3 years.
In November 2022, Fishery Officers carried out a search warrant at Mr Sufia’s home and found 65 pāua in a freezer along with 554 shucked pāua in another freezer.
“This was a large amount of pāua, more than 60 times the daily catch limit and more than 30 times the accumulation limit. Also, 45 of the pāua found were undersize.
While on bail on those charges, Mr Sufia was caught with a further 48 pāua, with 29 less than the minimum legal size. Mr Sufia was sentenced today on all matters.
“Mr Sufia intended to sell this seafood, which is also illegal. We have zero tolerance for poachers – they affect the sustainability of our shared fisheries, and they affect people who legitimately trade in seafood,” says Fisheries New Zealand regional manager, Fisheries Compliance, Phil Tasker.
“Mr Sufia claimed the pāua in his freezer was for a wedding in Auckland, an explanation the court didn’t believe. Mr Sufia’s offending was deliberate. He wasn’t concerned with legal size and catch limits; he was driven by financial gain from poaching this pāua.
When we find evidence of illegal fishing – you can be assured that we will investigate and depending on the circumstances, place the matter before the court,” Mr Tasker says.
Ruteru Sufia has a long record of breaking fisheries rules with over 35 offences dealt with by MPI over a number of years.
MPI encourages people to report suspected illegal activity through the ministry’s 0800 4 POACHER number (0800 476 224)
The ongoing Amarnath Yatra has witnessed an overwhelming turnout, with more than 3.21 lakh devotees having undertaken the pilgrimage in the last 19 days since it commenced on July 3. On Tuesday, another batch of 3,536 pilgrims departed from Jammu for the holy cave in Kashmir.
According to officials, “A fresh batch of 3,536 Yatris left the Bhagwati Nagar Yatri Niwas in Jammu today in two escorted convoys headed for the Valley. The first convoy of 48 vehicles, carrying 1,250 pilgrims, departed at 3:33 a.m. for the Baltal base camp, while the second convoy of 84 vehicles, with 2,286 pilgrims, left at 4:06 a.m. for the Pahalgam base camp.”
“There is a huge rush of Yatris, with thousands arriving daily from across the country at the twin base camps to undertake the Yatra,” added the officials.
Extensive multi-tier security arrangements have been put in place to ensure the safety of pilgrims. An additional 180 companies of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) have been deployed to strengthen the existing presence of the Army, BSF, CRPF, SSB, and local police. The Army has stationed over 8,000 special commandos along the route to secure the pilgrimage.
The Amarnath Yatra 2025 will continue for 38 days, concluding on August 9, which coincides with Shravan Purnima and Raksha Bandhan.
The U.S. Justice Department on Monday released more than 240,000 pages of documents related to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., including records from the FBI, which had surveilled the civil rights leader as part of an effort to discredit the Nobel Peace Prize winner and his civil rights movement.
Files were posted on the website of the National Archives, which said more would be released.
King died of an assassin’s bullet in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, as he increasingly extended his attention from a nonviolent campaign for equal rights for African Americans to economic issues and calls for peace. His death shook the United States in a year that would also bring race riots, anti-Vietnam war demonstrations and the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump’s administration released thousands of pages of digital documents related to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and former President John F. Kennedy, who was killed in 1963.
Trump promised on the campaign trail to provide more transparency about Kennedy’s death. Upon taking office, he also ordered aides to present a plan for the release of records relating to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and King.
The FBI kept files on King in the 1950s and 1960s – even wiretapping his phones – because of what the bureau falsely said at the time were his suspected ties to communism during the Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union. In recent years, the FBI has acknowledged that as an example of “abuse and overreach” in its history.
The civil rights leader’s family asked those who engage with the files to “do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief,” and condemned “any attempts to misuse these documents.”
“Now more than ever, we must honor his sacrifice by committing ourselves to the realization of his dream – a society rooted in compassion, unity, and equality,” they said in a statement.
“During our father’s lifetime, he was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the family, including his two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said, referring to the then-FBI director.
James Earl Ray, a segregationist and drifter, confessed to killing King but later recanted. He died in prison in 1998.
King’s family said it had filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit in Tennessee in 1999 that led to a jury unanimously concluding “that our father was the victim of a conspiracy involving Loyd Jowers and unnamed co-conspirators, including government agencies as a part of a wider scheme. The verdict also affirmed that someone other than James Earl Ray was the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame. Our family views that verdict as an affirmation of our long-held beliefs.”
Jowers, once a Memphis police officer, told ABC’s Prime Time Live in 1993 that he participated in a plot to kill King. A 2023 Justice Department report called his claims dubious.
Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian – People’s Republic of China in Russian –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
MINSK, July 22 (Xinhua) — Belarus spent 23.7 billion Belarusian rubles (7.25 billion U.S. dollars) in fixed capital investments in the first half of 2025, the country’s National Statistical Committee (Belstat) reported on Monday.
The share of Minsk region in the total volume of investments in fixed capital of the country was 25.5%. In Minsk, 21.2% of investments were used, in Gomel region – 13.3%, in Brest region – 13%, in Grodno region – 9.6%, in Vitebsk region – 8.8%, in Mogilev region – 8.7%.
In the technological structure of investments in fixed capital, 48.2% were spent on construction and installation works, 38% on machinery, equipment, and vehicles, 11.4% on other works and costs, and 2.4% on intellectual property.
By type of ownership, 38.4 percent of the total investment in fixed capital was state-owned. In turn, 55.4 percent was investment in private property, and 6.2 percent in foreign property.
In terms of sources of financing, the consolidated budget accounted for 20.2% of the total investment in fixed capital, while organizations’ own funds accounted for 43.6%. Borrowed funds from other organizations accounted for 0.6%, foreign investment – 1.9%, bank loans/borrowings – 13.6%, household funds – 12.7%, off-budget funds – 0.3%, and other sources – 7%.
In terms of the main types of economic activity, real estate transactions accounted for 22.6 percent of the total investment in fixed capital, manufacturing accounted for 18.7 percent, and agriculture, forestry and fisheries accounted for 14.7 percent. Transportation, warehousing, postal and courier services accounted for 6.8 percent, and the supply of electricity, gas, steam, hot water and air conditioning accounted for 6.3 percent. –0–
Please note: This information is raw content obtained directly from the source of the information. It is an accurate report of what the source claims and does not necessarily reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
Nantong Railway Station under construction in east China’s Jiangsu
Updated: July 22, 2025 10:43Xinhua
An aerial drone photo shows the construction site of the Nantong Railway Station in Nantong, east China’s Jiangsu Province, July 21, 2025. The station is along a high-speed railway linking Shanghai, Nanjing of Jiangsu Province and Hefei of Anhui Province in east China. [Photo/Xinhua]An aerial drone photo shows workers working at the construction site of the Nantong Railway Station in Nantong, east China’s Jiangsu Province, July 21, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]An aerial drone photo shows the construction site of the Nantong Railway Station in Nantong, east China’s Jiangsu Province, July 21, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]An aerial drone photo shows the construction site of the Nantong Railway Station in Nantong, east China’s Jiangsu Province, July 21, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]An aerial drone photo shows the construction site of the Nantong Railway Station in Nantong, east China’s Jiangsu Province, July 21, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]
aRepresentatives of the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) met in Hai Phong, Viet Nam to finalize their recommendations to APEC Leaders and seven Sectoral Ministerial Meetings to be held in Korea later this year. During the meeting, ABAC members reiterated an urgent call to APEC Leaders to reaffirm their commitment to open, rules-based, non-discriminatory, predictable and competitive markets in the face of mounting trade tensions, policy volatility and global uncertainty.
APEC’s prosperity has long rested on reducing distortions and opening markets, anchored by transparent, rules-based trade but today, that foundation is under threat.
Escalating trade frictions and uncertainty are disrupting supply chains, inflating costs, shaking business confidence and threatening jobs and living standards. This is throttling growth and distracting from the critical work of revitalizing businesses and our economies. In a ‘Statement on Open Markets’, ABAC underscored that the business community needs a return to the stable trade and economic environment that has underpinned decades of prosperity for every APEC economy.
As leaders of the Asia-Pacific business community, ABAC recognizes that artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping our economies, societies and daily lives. Yet the full benefits of AI cannot be realized without robust, efficient and sustainable infrastructure to support its development and deployment. In its Declaration on Sustainable AI Infrastructure and Investment, ABAC reaffirmed its commitment to shaping an AI-powered future that is not only innovative and inclusive, but also environmentally responsible.
Priorities for Inclusive and Sustainable Growth
In the 2025 Report to APEC Leaders, ABAC finalized the recommendations it will present later this year to drive sustainable and inclusive growth in the region including the following:
Accelerating the realization of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP), with early deliverables like the APEC Centre of Excellence on Paperless Trade, a new equal pay framework and a Greener Trade Framework.
Reforming and modernizing the WTO including making permanent the E-Commerce Moratorium for digital products.
Mobilizing investment to fund energy transitions, digital infrastructure, and disaster response.
Leading in Digital Transformation by ensuring equitable access to secure, sustainable digital infrastructure, shaping responsible AI deployment and governance and developing interoperable digital trade rules.
Strengthening healthcare supply chains and market access for innovations like genomics and AI.
Tackling demographic shifts by promoting workforce participation, labor mobility, skills recognition, pensions reform and leveraging emerging technologies.
ABAC’s work and recommendations are guided by the theme this year—“Bridge. Business. Beyond.” This reflects what is needed to deliver ABAC’s vision: bridge divides, empower businesses to drive growth and look beyond short-term challenges to long-term prosperity.
ABAC stands ready to work with APEC Leaders to shape a future of inclusive, sustainable growth for all.
ABAC 2025 Chairman H.S. Cho thanked His Excellency Luong Cuong, President of Viet Nam, who opened the ABAC meeting.
ABAC expressed its appreciation to ABAC Viet Nam for the excellent arrangements and the leaders of Hai Phong City for supporting the meeting. Prior to the start of the ABAC meeting, members joined participants to the Hai Phong Investment Promotion Conference held prior to their Meeting where they engaged with H.E. President of Viet Nam, Hai Phong City Leaders and local business owners.
For further information, please contact:
Hyungkon Park (Mr), ABAC Executive Director 2025 at +82 2 6050 3686 and [email protected] Antonio Basilio (Mr), Director of the ABAC Secretariat at +63 917 849 3351 and [email protected]
Source: United States Senator for Texas John Cornyn
WASHINGTON – Today on the floor, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) highlighted his priorities for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), including his Foreign Investment Guardrails to Help Thwart (FIGHT) China Act, which would safeguard the United States against the growing threat posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by prohibiting and requiring notification of U.S. investment in certain technologies in China. Excerpts of Sen. Cornyn’s remarks are below, and video can be found here.
“One of the things that I’m going to be focusing on as part of the defense authorization bill is to finally address outbound investment in China.”
“As we speak, U.S. companies are spending billions of dollars in China, investing in Chinese companies, particularly those involved in critical technologies like quantum computing and Artificial Intelligence.”
“I’ve been raising alarm bells for a number of years now and working toward a solution to this critical, strategic concern for a long time.”
“I have something to announce to my colleagues here: I’m not going to give up.”
“I’m not willing to take no for an answer on something that is so critical to our national security.”
“What good does it do to continue to increase our defense spending if American investors are simultaneously making investments in China in what amounts to the arsenal of our number-one strategic adversary?”
“Earlier this year, I introduced the Foreign Investment Guardrails to Help Thwart China Act, or the FIGHT China Act.”
“Secretary Bessent and his colleagues at the Treasury Department have been great allies and great partners in providing us with technical assistance on this legislation.”
“I would urge both our House and Senate colleagues to ensure that this year’s National Defense Authorization Bill addresses this critical issue.”
“It’s time for Americans to stop investing in China’s military.”
Six Northland students have been named as recipients of Northland Regional Council’s annual Tū i te ora Scholarship, each receiving $4000 and paid work experience with council this summer.
The recipients are Aakash Chatterji, Nehana Griffiths, Riana Lane, Isaac Morrow, Raine Ross, and William Trubshaw, who were selected from a pool of 26 applicants.
This is the sixth year council has awarded the scholarship, which recognises, encourages and supports student to undertake study that relates to council’s environmental and regulatory functions, whilst contributing to council’s vision ‘Tiakina te taiao, tuia te here tangata – Nurture the environment, bring together the people’.
Pou Manawhakahaere – Group Manager, Governance and Engagement Auriole Ruka says the scholarship provides value for both the recipients and council, with the recipients able to gain hands-on experience and council benefiting from the extra support during the busy summer period.
“It’s a great opportunity for the recipients to apply what they’ve learned through their tertiary study to real life scenarios, and our teams really value the different experiences and perspectives the recipients bring.”
Nehana Griffiths, who will join council’s Climate Action and Natural Hazards team, is passionate about learning how land has been utilised and the impacts of this over time.
“I enjoy looking at environmental management cases and learning how different communities in different contexts and situations tackle environmental problems, and what we can learn from those results for the future.”
Riana Lane will join council’s Biosecurity Partnerships team to help support community projects aimed at managing plant and animal species. She is determined to help protect the environment for future generations to enjoy and treasure.
“I want to apply my love for our flora and fauna in a career in conservation, breeding programmes, and zoology to work with and study our native species, and to support them to survive and thrive in our changing world.”
Ruka says the scholarship also enables council to tap into talent early and create a valuable pipeline for future employees.
“The scholarship offers students an incredible chance to gain valuable experience and discover if a career at council aligns with their career goals. We’ve had several previous recipients return to council after graduating or remained in casual and fixed-term roles.”
“We’re really looking forward to having this year’s recipients join us this summer and hope they enjoy the experience so much that they also return to council once they’ve completed their studies to enrich the region and its people with their knowledge and skills.”
The six winners (in alphabetical order by surname) are:
Aakash Chatterji, from Whangārei (Te Uriroroi, Te Parawhau, Te Mahurehure ki Whatitiri, Te Taoū. Ngāti Whātua, Ngā Puhi, and Varanasi India). Diploma in Environmental Management (Level 6) at NorthTec.
Nehana Griffiths, from Whangārei and Dunedin (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Rehua, Te Rarawa, Te Waiariki, Ngāti Korora, Ngāpuhi). Bachelor of Arts, majoring in History and minoring in Geography and Māori Studies at University Otago.
Riana Lane, from Whangārei. Bachelor of Science, majoring in Biological Science and minoring in Psychology at University of Canterbury.
Isaac Morrow, from Kerikeri (Te Aupōuri). Bachelor of Marine Science at University of Otago.
Raine Ross, from Mōtatau (Ngāti Te Tarawa, Ngāti Hine). Bachelor of Science (Environmental Science) at Massey University.
William Trubshaw, from Whangārei. Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science conjoint, majoring in Biological Sciences and Geography, and minoring in Mathematics at University of Canterbury.
Ruka says the recipients will join NRC from mid-November 2025 to mid-February 2026 in the Biosecurity Partnerships, Climate Action and Natural Hazards, Hydrology, Te Tiriti Partnerships and Engagement Team, and Water Quality teams.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
A U.S. passenger jet was forced to make an “aggressive maneuver” to avoid a midair collision with an Air Force B-52 bomber in North Dakota last week, multiple news outlets reported Monday.
The Delta Connection flight, operated by SkyWest Airlines, was en route from Minneapolis to Minot International Airport when the near miss occurred Friday.
According to The Washington Post, the aircraft had been cleared by air traffic control to land. However, the pilot was forced to perform a “go-around” after the B-52 bomber appeared in the flight path.
A video posted to Instagram and verified by Storyful showed the pilot explaining to passengers that the B-52 was on a converging course, said the report. He apologized for the sudden and “aggressive maneuver” required to avoid a midair collision, adding that “nobody told us” about the presence of the other aircraft.
A U.S. Air Force spokesperson told the local Minot Daily News that they are aware of the reporting and currently investigating the incident, confirming that a B-52 assigned to Minot Air Force Base — located about 20 kilometers north of Minot International Airport — conducted a flyover of the North Dakota State Fair Friday evening.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
A sizable asset in the making, or a liability in transition? China’s towering phenom Zhang Ziyu has turned heads at her home Asia Cup, leaving the basketball world wonder how such a unique talent could fit into the fast-paced modern game.
Standing 2.26 meters tall (7-foot-5), with her giant presence a spectacle to behold, China’s 18-year-old center Zhang, dubbed “Baby-face Shaq” by fans, couldn’t hide from the attention at the FIBA Asia Cup in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, where her insurmountable advantage under the rim, as apparent as her weakness in mobility, agility and conditioning, was put on full display.
China’s Zhang Ziyu (C) dwarves two Japanese opponents during a friendly in Hefei, capital of east China’s Anhui Province, June 20, 2025. (Xinhua/Zhou Mu)
Limited by head coach Gong Luming to 14 minutes of court time per game, Zhang finished her international debut at the senior level with a team-high 15.6 points on average across five games, ranking second overall after Lebanon’s Rebecca Akl (16.5).
Despite being triple teamed whenever she played, Zhang proved almost unstoppable near the basket, easily posting defenders up with her bulk to score free points as long as she settled deep enough in the paint.
Her slow legs and lack of athleticism, however, took a heavy toll on her game, significantly limiting her defensive coverage and threat in offensive transition.
As currently the world’s tallest professional female player, Zhang could only contribute 0.4 blocks and 5.6 rebounds per game in Shenzhen, ranking 18th and 14th, respectively, in two key stats that measure a post player’s impact.
A raw talent playing the game, literally, on a level of her own, Zhang’s emergence is sure to pose a huge challenge for opponents as Team China looks to build its future around her.
“She’s an extraordinary talent with an untapped potential, and could be a huge asset for Chinese women’s basketball if developed in the right way,” Gong said of Zhang’s performance after Team China beat South Korea 101-66 in Sunday’s bronze-medal playoff to finish third on the podium.
“She obviously lacks experience at this level, and has so much catching-up to do to get used to the physicality and pace of the senior game.
“Defensively, she has to improve her movement and rebounding, while, offensively, we hope she can develop a more versatile skillset and get more involved in making plays for teammates.
“She has a long career ahead of her and a vast room for improvement. This was just her first test at the senior level, and I feel like we put way too much expectation on her, which didn’t help,” said Gong, who returned to the team just three months ago for a second stint after guiding the women’s squad to the 2001 Asia championship and 2002 Asian Games titles.
Zhang’s current incompatibility with the fast-paced, high-intensity game was exposed in Team China’s disappointing 90-81 semifinal loss to Japan, where the host’s strength in the paint was neutralized by Japan’s run-and-gun game, which featured sharp shooting, spacing and quick transition.
China’s slow-rotating zone defense, with Zhang settled deep down court whenever she’s in the game, allowed Japan’s teen star Kokoro Tanaka too many uncontested shots on the perimeter, where Japan hit 16 three-pointers, 10 more than China did, to upset the host in front of its home fans.
Corey Gaines, Japan’s head coach, attributed the critical win to his team’s perfect execution of a game plan tailored against the host’s “too obvious” advantage, following two warm-up losses to Team China last month.
Still, Zhang’s rise to stardom as a potential game-changer on the international stage will be inevitable, according to Australian legend Lauren Jackson.
The five-time Olympic medalist said she’s been following Zhang’s game as a fan, and feels excited for her future as a star in the making following the NBA Rising Star tournament in Singapore earlier this month.
“She’s starting to learn the women’s game after graduating from age-grade basketball, and I just hope she’s enjoying every minute, because, before too long, she is going to be the center of everybody’s attention and dominating the FIBA game,” Jackson told ESPN.
“Obviously she’s super tall, but the way she plays, she certainly has the ability to completely dominate, purely because of her height,” said the 44-year-old former WNBA star.
“In saying that, she’s got great touch around the ring, she can catch and she’s got a big, strong body, and has the ability to finish under pressure with three or four people hanging off her.
“It’s exciting to think about where she’s going to go in the game, and what she’s going to do,” said Jackson, a dominant 1.98-meter center in her prime, who retired after helping Australia qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Playing in a major home tournament as a teenager was a perfect start for Zhang, and the next big experience is something Jackson has lived and breathed herself — a potential call from the WNBA.
The high expectations, though, could be a burden that Zhang will need some extra help and support to overcome, said Jackson, who made her major international debut for the Opals at the 1998 world championships and became a big name at the Sydney Olympics.
“The Australian team, our coach and the team manager made an effort of trying to protect me from the media and the external pressures. In our lead-in games to Sydney, they made sure I wasn’t doing much media and things like that,” she recalls.
“It was a very strange, surreal time, and I was ignorant to how much pressure was probably on me. I hope she has the same support as I had to help her out.”
OSAN AIR BASE, Republic of Korea — On July 17, 2025, the 51st Mission Support Group hosted a bilateral logistics and transportation training event with the Korean Service Corps Battalion at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea. The training focused on establishing bed-down locations and executing cargo-handling operations to boost interoperability and contingency readiness.
OSAN AIR BASE, Republic of Korea — On July 17, 2025, the 51st Mission Support Group hosted a bilateral logistics and transportation training event with the Korean Service Corps Battalion at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea. The training focused on establishing bed-down locations and executing cargo-handling operations to boost interoperability and contingency readiness.
DUMAGUETE, Philippines, July 22, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Bitget, the leading cryptocurrency exchange and Web3 company, is deepening its commitment to digital inclusion in the Philippines by expanding its PayFi Islands initiative to Negros Oriental. This next phase will bring Starlink-powered high-speed internet to Apo Elementary School and the Arts and Design Collective Dumaguete (ADCD), tackling long-standing connectivity challenges in education and the creative sector.
In many parts of Negros Oriental, including remote islands like Apo and urban centers such as Dumaguete, reliable internet access remains elusive. Outdated infrastructure, like microwave radio links, continues to limit bandwidth and reliability, cutting communities off from modern tools and opportunities. This digital divide has sent a ripple effect through key sectors, such as education and creative industries, hindering access to information, digital tools, and, in turn, economic opportunities.
Bitget Starlink being presented to Apo Elementary School
Bitget’s latest deployment brings high-speed Starlink internet to two key communities in Negros Oriental, each facing distinct yet equally urgent digital challenges. After years of limited resources and unreliable internet, Apo Elementary School, the only public school on Apo Island, will finally be connected through Starlink. This new access will unlock digital learning tools, teacher development programs, and broader educational networks, creating new opportunities for academic growth and long-term empowerment in a community that has long relied on fishing.
Bitget Starlink being presented to Arts and Design Collective Dumaguete (ADCD)
Meanwhile, in Dumaguete, Bitget partnered with the Arts and Design Collective Dumaguete (ADCD), a vibrant creative hub preparing to launch a maker’s space for local artists and entrepreneurs. Previously held back by poor internet access, this space will now offer digital tools, fabrication technologies, and pathways to global collaboration, enabling the city’s creative sector to thrive in the digital economy.
“Access to the internet is access to opportunities,” said Vugar Usi Zade, COO of Bitget. “With PayFi Islands, we’re connecting people to education, to the digital economy, to more opportunities. These communities deserve to be part of the future, and we’re here to help make that happen.”
Scheduled for full deployment in July 2025, the project includes hardware installation, subscription support, and community training. The expansion in Negros Oriental is part of Bitget’s second phase in bridging the digital divide in Philippine Island communities. In May 2025, Bitget’s Starlink Program first introduced reliable connectivity to Siargao’s Espoir School of Life and Barangay Pitogo. As Bitget continues its rollout, these initiatives lay the foundation for Bitget’s broader educational and empowerment programs, Blockchain4Youth and Blockchain4Her. These programs will introduce blockchain literacy, financial education, and decentralized technology training to students and women-led cooperatives in the region, ensuring that the new digital infrastructure becomes a platform for sustainable development.
The Blockchain4Youth initiative highlights a powerful message that true crypto adoption begins with access. From the classrooms of Apo Island to the creative studios of Dumaguete, this expansion reflects Bitget’s long-term commitment to inclusion, empowerment, and building a future where no one is left offline.
About Bitget
Established in 2018, Bitget is the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange and Web3 company. Serving over 120 million users in 150+ countries and regions, the Bitget exchange is committed to helping users trade smarter with its pioneering copy trading feature and other trading solutions, while offering real-time access to Bitcoin price, Ethereum price, and other cryptocurrency prices. Formerly known as BitKeep, Bitget Wallet is a leading non-custodial crypto wallet supporting 130+ blockchains and millions of tokens. It offers multi-chain trading, staking, payments, and direct access to 20,000+ DApps, with advanced swaps and market insights built into a single platform.
Bitget is driving crypto adoption through strategic partnerships, such as its role as the Official Crypto Partner of the World’s Top Football League, LALIGA, in EASTERN, SEA and LATAM markets, as well as a global partner of Turkish National athletes Buse Tosun Çavuşoğlu (Wrestling world champion), Samet Gümüş (Boxing gold medalist) and İlkin Aydın (Volleyball national team), to inspire the global community to embrace the future of cryptocurrency.
Aligned with its global impact strategy, Bitget has joined hands with UNICEF to support blockchain education for 1.1 million people by 2027. In the world of motorsports, Bitget is the exclusive cryptocurrency exchange partner of MotoGP™, one of the world’s most thrilling championships.
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ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on July 22, 2025.
New study finds the gender earnings gap could be halved if we reined in the long hours often worked by men Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lyndall Strazdins, Professor, Australian National University asylun/Shutterstock There are lots of reasons why people work extra hours. In some jobs, it’s the only way to cover the workload. In others, the pay is poor, so people need to work extra time. And in others still, working back
New study finds the gender earnings gap could be halved if we reined in the long hours often worked by men Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lyndall Strazdins, Professor, Australian National University asylun/Shutterstock There are lots of reasons why people work extra hours. In some jobs, it’s the only way to cover the workload. In others, the pay is poor, so people need to work extra time. And in others still, working back
Sky TV to buy channel Three owner Discovery NZ for $1 By Anan Zaki, RNZ News business reporter Sky TV has agreed to fully acquire TV3 owner Discovery New Zealand for $1. Discovery NZ is a part of US media giant Warner Bros Discovery, and operates channel Three and online streaming platform ThreeNow. NZX-listed Sky said the deal would be completed on a cash-free, debt-free basis,
Suffering in Gaza reaches ‘new depths’ – Australia condemns ‘inhumane killing’ of Palestinians Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amra Lee, PhD candidate in Protection of Civilians, Australian National University Australia has joined 28 international partners in calling for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and a lifting of all restrictions on food and medical supplies. Foreign Minister Penny Wong, along with counterparts from
As female independent MPs descend on parliament, they’re fulfilling the dreams of women across history Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Chappell, Post Doctoral Research, University of New England Australia’s 48th parliament has a record 112 women members. Ten of those women are independents. As they take their seats in the chamber, they’ll be realising the aspirations of some of Australia’s first suffragists who, more than a
Are screenwriters paid for a product or a service? The definition matters for their workplace rights Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Goodwin, Lecturer in Arts Management and Human Resources, The University of Melbourne Vitaly Gariev/Unsplash The film and television sector in Australia employs over 26,000 workers and generated more than A$4.5 billion in income in 2021–22. TV dramas generate a large part of this revenue. Australian screen
NZ and allies condemn ‘inhumane’, ‘horrifying’ killings in Gaza and ‘drip feeding’ of aid RNZ News New Zealand has joined 24 other countries in calling for an end to the war in Gaza, and criticising what they call the inhumane killing of Palestinians. The countries — including Britain, France, Canada and Australia plus the European Union — also condemed the Israeli government’s aid delivery model in Gaza as “dangerous”.
Everyone’s talking about the Perseid meteor shower – but don’t bother trying to see it in Australia or NZ Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland View of the 2023 Perseid meteor shower from the southernmost part of Sequoia National Forest, US. NASA/Preston Dyches In recent days, you may have seen articles claiming the “best meteor shower of the year” is about to start. Unfortunately,
Pumped up with poison: new research shows many anabolic steroids contain toxic metals Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Piatkowski, Lecturer in Psychology, Griffith University MilosStankovic/Getty Images Eighteen-year-old Mark scrolls Instagram late at night, watching videos of fitness influencers showing off muscle gains and lifting the equivalent of a baby elephant off the gym floor. Spurred on by hashtags and usernames indicating these feats involve
How EVs and electric water heaters are turning cities into giant batteries Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bin Lu, Senior Research Fellow in Renewable Energy, Australian National University Leonid Andronov/Shutterstock As the electrification of transport and heating accelerates, many worry the increased demand could overload national power grids. In Australia, electricity consumption is expected to double by 2050. If everyone charges their car and
The end of open-plan classrooms: how school design reflects changing ideas in education Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leon Benade, Professor in the School of Education of Edith Cowan University (ECU), Perth, WA, Edith Cowan University skynesher/Getty Imaged The end of open-plan classrooms in New Zealand, recently announced by Education Minister Erica Stanford, marks yet another swing of the pendulum in school design. Depending on
Could Rupert Murdoch bring down Donald Trump? A court case threatens more than just their relationship Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dodd, Professor of Journalism, Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne If Rupert Murdoch becomes a white knight standing up to a rampantly bullying US president, the world has moved into the upside-down. This is, after all, the media mogul whose US
PBS and NPR are generally unbiased, independent of government propaganda and provide key benefits to US democracy Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin, Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs, Boise State University Congress’ cuts to public broadcasting will diminish the range and volume of the free press and the independent reporting it provides. MicroStockHub-iStock/Getty Images Plus Champions of the almost entirely party-line vote
Africa’s minerals are being bartered for security: why it’s a bad idea Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hanri Mostert, SARChI Chair for Mineral Law in Africa, University of Cape Town A US-brokered peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda binds the two African nations to a worrying arrangement: one where a country signs away its mineral resources to a superpower
A popular sweetener could be damaging your brain’s defences, says recent study Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Havovi Chichger, Professor, Biomedical Science, Anglia Ruskin University Found in everything from protein bars to energy drinks, erythritol has long been considered a safe alternative to sugar. But new research suggests this widely used sweetener may be quietly undermining one of the body’s most crucial protective barriers
Why has a bill to relax NZ foreign investment rules had so little scrutiny? ANALYSIS: By Jane Kelsey, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau While public attention has been focused on the domestic fast-track consenting process for infrastructure and mining, Associate Minister of Finance David Seymour has been pushing through another fast-track process — this time for foreign investment in New Zealand. But it has had almost no public
PSNA calls on NZ to urgently condemn Israeli weaponisation of starvation Asia Pacific Report The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has called on the New Zealand government to immediately condemn Israel’s weaponisation of starvation and demand an end to the siege of Gaza. It has also called for a permanent ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access to the besieged enclave. “All political parties and elected officials must break
Labor to put disclaimer under Mark Latham’s caucus room picture Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The picture of Mark Latham on the caucus room gallery of Labor leaders will have an annotation under it saying he was expelled for life and his actions do not accord with Labor values. The first meeting of the new
Pacific leaders demand respectful involvement in memorial for unmarked graves By Mary Afemata, of PMN News and RNZ Pacific Porirua City Council is set to create a memorial for more than 1800 former patients of the local hospital buried in unmarked graves. But Pacific leaders are asking to be “meaningfully involved” in the process, including incorporating prayer, language, and ceremonial practices. More than 50 people
Newspoll and Resolve give Labor big leads as parliament resumes after the election Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne With federal parliament to sit for the first time since the election on Tuesday, Newspoll gives Labor a 57–43 lead and Resolve a 56–44 lead. In Tasmania,
Source: United States Senator for Virginia Tim Kaine
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine (both D-VA) released the following statement regarding the official score from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that President Trump and Republicans’ megabill will add $3.4 trillion to the budget deficit through 2034, before accounting for added interest costs. Including additional interest, the bill will increase borrowing by $4.1 trillion:
“The official CBO score on President Trump and Republicans’ ‘Big, Ugly Bill,’ which comes weeks after the law’s passage because Republicans fast-tracked it, confirms what we’ve been saying all along: when push comes to shove, Republicans will always do whatever it takes to give tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy. We wish they could bring that same determination to lowering the deficit and helping working- and middle-class families. Today’s news is further proof that the partisan megabill remains a bad deal for Americans—exploding the debt, forcing millions off their health insurance, slashing food assistance programs, and killing jobs. We will keep working to safeguard Virginians from the disastrous impacts this law will have for Virginia and the country.”
The Republican law, which Warner and Kaine strongly opposed, makes massive cuts to health care, nutrition assistance, and other critical programs that Virginians rely on in order to cut taxes for the ultra-wealthy. While the bill was being considered in the Senate, Warner and Kaine introduced a series of amendments in an attempt to improve the legislation, but Republicans blocked them. Under the Republican bill, hundreds of thousands of Virginians will lose health insurance because of cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, and many rural hospitals will lose federal funding from Medicaid, putting them at risk of closure.
78,000 Virginians will lose access to some benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Virginia will be required to contribute an estimated $263 million annually in state cost-share for benefits, which have always been fully federally funded. The law jeopardizes clean energy jobs in Virginia by phasing out clean energy and energy efficiency tax credits and incentives that were passed in the Inflation Reduction Act. The law gives the top 0.1% a $250,000 tax cut and makes it harder for students to access student loans. The legislation also includes $85 million to move the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia to Houston, Texas; the full cost to move the space shuttle is estimated to be $300 million to $400 million.
Source: United States Senator for Virginia Tim Kaine
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine (both D-VA) released the following statement regarding the official score from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that President Trump and Republicans’ megabill will add $3.4 trillion to the budget deficit through 2034, before accounting for added interest costs. Including additional interest, the bill will increase borrowing by $4.1 trillion:
“The official CBO score on President Trump and Republicans’ ‘Big, Ugly Bill,’ which comes weeks after the law’s passage because Republicans fast-tracked it, confirms what we’ve been saying all along: when push comes to shove, Republicans will always do whatever it takes to give tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy. We wish they could bring that same determination to lowering the deficit and helping working- and middle-class families. Today’s news is further proof that the partisan megabill remains a bad deal for Americans—exploding the debt, forcing millions off their health insurance, slashing food assistance programs, and killing jobs. We will keep working to safeguard Virginians from the disastrous impacts this law will have for Virginia and the country.”
The Republican law, which Warner and Kaine strongly opposed, makes massive cuts to health care, nutrition assistance, and other critical programs that Virginians rely on in order to cut taxes for the ultra-wealthy. While the bill was being considered in the Senate, Warner and Kaine introduced a series of amendments in an attempt to improve the legislation, but Republicans blocked them. Under the Republican bill, hundreds of thousands of Virginians will lose health insurance because of cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, and many rural hospitals will lose federal funding from Medicaid, putting them at risk of closure.
78,000 Virginians will lose access to some benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Virginia will be required to contribute an estimated $263 million annually in state cost-share for benefits, which have always been fully federally funded. The law jeopardizes clean energy jobs in Virginia by phasing out clean energy and energy efficiency tax credits and incentives that were passed in the Inflation Reduction Act. The law gives the top 0.1% a $250,000 tax cut and makes it harder for students to access student loans. The legislation also includes $85 million to move the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia to Houston, Texas; the full cost to move the space shuttle is estimated to be $300 million to $400 million.
Source: United States Senator for Virginia Tim Kaine
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine (both D-VA) released the following statement regarding the official score from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that President Trump and Republicans’ megabill will add $3.4 trillion to the budget deficit through 2034, before accounting for added interest costs. Including additional interest, the bill will increase borrowing by $4.1 trillion:
“The official CBO score on President Trump and Republicans’ ‘Big, Ugly Bill,’ which comes weeks after the law’s passage because Republicans fast-tracked it, confirms what we’ve been saying all along: when push comes to shove, Republicans will always do whatever it takes to give tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy. We wish they could bring that same determination to lowering the deficit and helping working- and middle-class families. Today’s news is further proof that the partisan megabill remains a bad deal for Americans—exploding the debt, forcing millions off their health insurance, slashing food assistance programs, and killing jobs. We will keep working to safeguard Virginians from the disastrous impacts this law will have for Virginia and the country.”
The Republican law, which Warner and Kaine strongly opposed, makes massive cuts to health care, nutrition assistance, and other critical programs that Virginians rely on in order to cut taxes for the ultra-wealthy. While the bill was being considered in the Senate, Warner and Kaine introduced a series of amendments in an attempt to improve the legislation, but Republicans blocked them. Under the Republican bill, hundreds of thousands of Virginians will lose health insurance because of cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, and many rural hospitals will lose federal funding from Medicaid, putting them at risk of closure.
78,000 Virginians will lose access to some benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Virginia will be required to contribute an estimated $263 million annually in state cost-share for benefits, which have always been fully federally funded. The law jeopardizes clean energy jobs in Virginia by phasing out clean energy and energy efficiency tax credits and incentives that were passed in the Inflation Reduction Act. The law gives the top 0.1% a $250,000 tax cut and makes it harder for students to access student loans. The legislation also includes $85 million to move the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia to Houston, Texas; the full cost to move the space shuttle is estimated to be $300 million to $400 million.
The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Monday that more intense downpours and glacier outburst floods are becoming increasingly frequent, with deadly consequences for communities caught off guard.
“Flash floods are not new, but their frequency and intensity are increasing in many regions due to rapid urbanization, land-use change and a changing climate,” said Stefan Uhlenbrook, WMO Director of Hydrology, Water and Cryosphere.
Each additional degree Celsius of warming enables the air to hold about 7 per cent more water vapour.
“This is increasing the risk of more extreme rainfall events. At the same time, glacier-related flood hazards are increasing due to enhanced ice melting in a warmer climate,” he added.
Thousands of lives lost every year
Floods and flash floods claim thousands of lives each year and cause billions of dollars in damage. In 2020, severe flooding across South Asia killed more than 6,500 people and caused $105 billion in economic losses.
Two years later, catastrophic floods in Pakistan left over 1,700 people dead, 33 million affected and losses exceeding $40 billion, reversing years of development gains.
This year, the onslaught has continued. In July alone, South Asia, East Asia and the United States have seen a string of deadly events, from monsoon rains to glacial lake bursts and sudden flash floods.
Each year, extreme weather and climate events take a massive toll on lives and economies worldwide.
Asia reels from monsoon onslaught
In India and Pakistan, heavy monsoon rains have severed transport links, washed away homes and triggered landslides. Pakistan declared a state of emergency in its worst-hit areas, deploying military helicopters for rescue missions after forecasters warned of exceptional flood risk along the upper Jhelum River.
The Republic of Korea suffered record-breaking downpours between 16-20 July, with rainfall exceeding 115 mm per hour in some locations. At least 18 people were killed and more than 13,000 were evacuated.
In southern China, authorities issued flash flood and landslide alerts on 21 July, just a day after Typhoon Wipha battered Hong Kong, underscoring the compound risks of sequential storms.
Texas flash flood strikes overnight
Overnight 3 into 4 July, a sudden deluge turned Texas Hill Country into a disaster zone, killing more than 100 people and leaving dozens missing. In a few hours, 10-18 inches (25–46 cm) of rain swamped the Guadalupe River basin, sending the river surging 26 feet (8 metres) in just 45 minutes.
1-day precipitation totals from NASA’s IMERG multi-satellite precipitation product show heavy rainfall over central Texas on July 4, 2025.
Many of the victims were young girls at a summer camp, caught unaware as floodwaters tore through sleeping quarters around 4 AM. Although the US National Weather Service issued warnings ahead of time, local sirens were lacking and the final alerts came when most were asleep.
Glacier outburst floods surge
Not all floods this month were caused by rain.
In Nepal’s Rasuwa district, a sudden outburst from a supraglacial lake – formed on a glacier’s surface – swept away hydropower plants, a major bridge and trade routes on 7 July. At least 11 people were killed and more than a dozen are reported missing.
Scientists at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), a WMO partner, say glacial-origin floods in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region are occurring far more often than two decades ago, when one might strike every five to 10 years.
In May and June 2025 alone, three glacial outburst floods hit Nepal, Afghanistan and Pakistan, with two more in Nepal on 7 July. If warming continues, the risk of such floods could triple by the century’s end.
Aftermath of a flood that swept through a high-altitude village in Nepal.
Closing the warning gap
The WMO is stepping up efforts to improve flood forecasting through its global initiative and real-time guidance platform, now used in over 70 countries.
The system integrates satellite data, radar and high-resolution weather models to flag threats hours in advance and is being expanded into a country-led, globally interoperable framework.
A 2022 World Bank study estimated that 1.81 billion people – nearly a quarter of the world’s population – are directly exposed to 1-in-100-year flood events, with 89 per cent living in low- and middle-income countries.
The UN’s Early Warnings for All initiative aims to ensure that everyone, everywhere, is protected by early warning systems by 2027.
There are lots of reasons why people work extra hours. In some jobs, it’s the only way to cover the workload. In others, the pay is poor, so people need to work extra time. And in others still, working back late or on weekends is encouraged and rewarded, explicitly and implicitly.
Those employees who do the extra hours, willingly and without complaint, are seen as hungry and ambitious. A view expressed in some workplaces is simply “that’s what everyone does”.
But what if we discovered that people – at least in heterosexual couple households – can only work long hours at their partner’s expense? Would it still be OK for workplaces to expect people to work longer than our standard full time week, and incentivise them for doing so?
Our study, published this month in the journal Social Indicators Research, found in Australian couple households where both partners had jobs, men earned on average $536 more than women every week. In Germany, the weekly gender earnings gap was €400.
About half of that income gap in both Australia and Germany was due to men working long hours and women effectively subsidising them to do this by cutting back their own work hours.
It’s tough to combine a job with running a household, but one person working extra hours makes this almost impossible. In households, a job with long work hours means someone else must pick up the rest. This includes caring for kids, running the house, walking the dog, cooking dinner and more.
What happens when one partner has to pick up the rest
One in three Australian employees care for children, and 13% of part-time and 11% of all full-time employees give care to someone else, often an ageing parent. This has knock-on effects which are impacting many people in our workforce. The extra hours don’t come out of nowhere, but they have been invisible in what we think of as fair.
In our study, we costed this knock-on in terms of earnings and work hours gaps in households, and what this could mean for equality of income.
We studied between 3,000 and 6,000 heterosexual couples from 2002 to 2019 in Australia and in Germany, estimating their weekly earnings and work hour gaps.
To understand the dynamics in the household, we used a two-stage instrumental variable Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition – a method that allowed us to model earnings gaps as a function of both partners’ paid and unpaid hours. This helped us estimate what the gender gap in hours and earnings would look like if time weren’t being “borrowed” or “subsidised” within the home.
Changing the hours men and women work
The results were striking. We showed how one partner’s paid work hours can increase when the other partner does more unpaid (household) work. This ability for partners to “trade” hours was one of the most important drivers of the work hour (and earning) gap.
So we re-ran models and recalculated what hours a woman and a man would work if one partner wasn’t “subsidising” the other’s work hours. The model showed women would work more hours and men would work fewer when there was a more even split of home duties. The weekly work hour gap shrank to 5.1 hours in Australia (a 58% reduction) and 6.9 hours in Germany (a 47% reduction).
The impact on earnings was just as significant. The gender earnings gap would shrink by 43% in Australia and 25% in Germany.
The gender earnings and work hours gaps are well known, and these are not the only countries facing this problem. What hasn’t been shown before is how it works in households to drive gender inequality across the nation.
The rest of the earnings gap is largely due to differences in pay across male and female industries and jobs, and the persistent gender pay gap in hourly pay.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the average gender gap in hourly pay is 11.1%. This gap reflects the fact, hour for hour, women are generally paid less. The average weekly earnings gap is much larger at 26.4%.
As things currently stand in Australia, women earn only three-quarters of what men do, a shortfall similar to that in (Germany).
One part of the earnings gap is the gap in the hourly pay rate, but the other is the gap in how many hours are worked. We show how this would shrink if men worked hours that were closer to Australia’s legislated 38-hour week, and workplaces encouraged them to do so.
Closing the gap
If we stopped the time-shifting to partners that our culture of long working hours relies upon, we estimate that in a heterosexual couple, men’s hours would average closer to 41 a week, and women’s would increase to 36.
We could change the long and short hour compromise that so many households have to face. This change could make a huge difference to gender inequality, and women would no longer carry such a large economic cost from their partner’s work.
Maybe reining in excess hours should be the new focus for gender equality.
Lyndall Strazdins has received funding from the Australian Research Council to undertake research on this topic.
She has served as an expert witness on work hours and well-being for the State and Federal Court.
Liana Leach receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Medical Research Future Fund. She is a member of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU).
Tinh Doan receives funding from the Australia ComCare and the Department of Health and Aged Care for other works that are not related to this article.
If Rupert Murdoch becomes a white knight standing up to a rampantly bullying US president, the world has moved into the upside-down.
This is, after all, the media mogul whose US television network, Fox News, actively supported Donald Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election result and paid out a US$787 million (about A$1.2 billion) lawsuit for doing so.
It is also the network that supplied several members of Trump’s inner circle, including former Fox host, now controversial Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth.
But that is where we are after Trump filed a writ on July 18 after Murdoch’s financial newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, published an article about a hand-drawn card Trump is alleged to have sent to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2003. The newspaper reported:
A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.
The Journal said it has seen the letter but did not republish it. The letter allegedly concluded:
Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.
The card was apparently Trump’s contribution to a birthday album compiled for Epstein by the latter’s partner Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence after being found guilty of sex trafficking in 2021.
Trump was furious. He told his Truth Social audience he had warned Murdoch the letter was fake. He wrote, “Mr Murdoch stated that he would take care of it but obviously did not have the power to do so,” referring to Murdoch handing leadership of News Corporation to his eldest son Lachlan in 2023.
Trump is being pincered. On one side, The Wall Street Journal is a respected newspaper that speaks to literate, wealthy Americans who remain deeply sceptical about Trump’s radical initiative on tariffs, which it described in an editorial as “the dumbest trade war in history”.
On the other side is the conspiracy theory-thirsty MAGA base who have been told for years that there was a massive conspiracy around Epstein’s apparent suicide in 2019 that included the so-called deep state, Democrat elites and, no doubt, the Clintons.
Trump, who loves pro wrestling as well as adopting its garish theatrics, might characterise his lawsuit against Murdoch as a smackdown to rival Hulk Hogan vs Andre the Giant in the 1980s.
To adopt wrestling argot, though, it is a rare battle between two heels.
A friendship of powerful convenience
Murdoch and Trump’s relationship is longstanding but convoluted. The key to understanding it is that both men are ruthlessly transactional.
Exposure in Murdoch’s New York Post in the 1980s and ‘90s was crucial to building Trump’s reputation.
Not that Murdoch particularly likes Trump. Yes, Murdoch attended his second inauguration, albeit in a back row behind the newly favoured big tech media moguls. He was also seen sitting in the Oval Office a few days later looking quite at home.
But this was pure power-display politics, not the behaviour of a friend.
Remember Murdoch’s derision on hearing Trump was considering standing for office before the 2016 election, and his promotion of Ron De Santis in the primaries before Trump’s second term. Murdoch’s political hero has always been Ronald Reagan. Trump has laid waste to the Republican Party of Reagan.
Murdoch knows what the rest of sane America knows: Trump is downright weird, if not dangerous. This, of course, only makes Murdoch’s complicity in Trump’s rise to power, and Fox News’ continued boosterism of Trump, all the more appalling.
But, in keeping with Murdoch’s relationship to power throughout his career, what he helps make, he also helps destroy. Perhaps now it’s Trump’s turn to be unmade. As a former Murdoch lieutenant told The Financial Times over the weekend:
he’s testing out: Is Trump losing his base? And where do I need to be to stay in the heart of the base?
And here is Murdoch’s great advantage, and his looming threat.
A double-edged sword
The advantage comes with the scope of Murdoch’s media empire, which operates like a federation of different mastheads, each with their own market and aspirations. While Fox News panders to the MAGA base, and The New York Post juices its New York audience, The Wall Street Journal speaks, and listens, to business. Each audience has different needs, meaning they’re often presented with the same news in very different ways, or sometimes different news entirely.
Like a federation, though, News Corp uses its various operations to drive the type of change that affects all its markets.
It might work like this. The Wall Street Journal breaks a story that’s so shocking it begins to chip away at MAGA’s unquestioning loyalty of Trump. This process is, of course, willingly aided by the rest of the media. The resulting groundswell eventually allows Fox News and the Post to tentatively follow their audiences into questioning, and then perhaps criticising, Trump.
Fox News audiences could slowly begin to question Trump, or abandon the network entirely. NurPhoto/Getty
The threat is that before that groundswell builds, Murdoch is seriously vulnerable to criticism from a still dominant Trump, who can turn conspiracy-prone audiences away from Fox News with just a social media post. Trump has already been busy doing just that, saying he is looking forward to getting Murdoch onto the witness stand for his lawsuit.
If the Fox audience decides it’s the proprietor who’s behind this denigration of Trump, they may decide to boycott their own favoured media channel, even though Fox’s programming hasn’t yet started questioning Trump.
The Murdochs’ fear of audience backlash was a major factor in Fox’s promulgation of the Big Lie after Trump’s defeat in 2020. The fear their audience might defect to Newsmax or some other right-wing media outfit is just as real today.
History littered with fakery
We also need to consider that Trump might be right. What if the letter is a fake?
Murdoch has form when it comes to high-profile exposés that turn out to be fiction. Who can forget the Hitler Diaries in 1983, which we now know Murdoch knew were fake before he published.
Think also of the Pauline Hanson photos, allegedly of her posing in lingerie, all of which were quickly proved to be fake after they were published by Murdoch’s Australian tabloids in 2009.
There was also The Sun’s despicable and wilfully wrong campaign against Elton John in 1987 and the same paper’s continueddenigration of the people of Liverpool following the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989.
But while Murdoch’s News Corp has a history of confection and fakery, the Wall Street Journal has a reputation for straight reportage, albeit through a conservative lens. Since Murdoch bought it in 2007, it has been engaged in its own internal battle for editorial standards.
Media rolling over
What Trump won’t get from Murdoch is the same acquiescence he’s enjoyed from America’s ABC and CBS networks, which have both handed over tens of millions of dollars in defamation settlements following dubious claims by Trump about the nature of their coverage.
In December 2024, ABC’s owner Disney settled and agreed to pay US$15 million (A$23 million) to Trump’s presidential library. The president sued after a presenter said Trump was found guilty of raping E. Jean Carroll.
Trump had actually been found guilty by a jury in a civil trial of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll and was ordered to pay her US$5 million (A$7.6 million).
CBS’ parent company, Paramount, did similarly after being sued by the president, agreeing in early July to settle and pay US$16 million (A$24.5 million) to Trump’s library. This was despite earlier saying the case was “completely without merit”.
Beware the legal microscope
From Trump’s viewpoint, two prominent media companies have been cowed. But his campaign against critical media doesn’t stop there.
Last week, congress passed a bill cancelling federal funding for the country’s two public-service media outlets, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR).
Also last week, CBS announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s stridently critical comedy show, although CBS claims this is just a cost-cutting exercise and not about appeasing a bully in the White House.
Presuming the reported birthday letter is real, Murdoch will not bend so easily. And that’s when it will be important to pay attention, because at some point Trump’s lawyers will advise him about the dangers of depositions and discovery: the legal processes that force parties to a dispute to reveal what they have and what they know.
If the Epstein files do implicate Trump, the legal fight won’t last long and the media campaign against him will only intensify.
Right now we have the spectre of Murdoch joining that other disaffected mogul, Elon Musk, in a moral crusade against Trump, the man they both helped make. The implications are head-spinning.
As global bullies, the three of them probably deserve each other. But we, the public, surely deserve better than any of them.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Radiodensity heatmap of emerald tree monitors.Roy Ebel
Monitor lizards, also known in Australia as goannas, are some of the most iconic reptiles on the continent. Their lineage not only survived the mass extinction that ended the reign of non-avian dinosaurs, but also gave rise to the largest living lizards on Earth.
Today, these formidable creatures pace through forests and scrublands, flicking their tongues as they go.
A new study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society looks beneath their skin. For the first time, it reveals hidden bone structures that may hold the key to the evolutionary success of goannas in Australia.
An essential organ
The skin is an organ essential for survival. In some animals, it includes a layer of bone plates embedded among the skin tissue. Think of the armour-like plates in crocodiles or armadillos: these are osteoderms.
Their size ranges from microscopic to massive, with the back plates of the stegosaurus as the most impressive example.
We have only just started to understand these enigmatic structures. Osteoderms can be found in animal lineages that diverged up to 380 million years ago. This means these bone plates would have evolved independently, just like active flight did in birds, pterosaurs and bats.
But what is their purpose? While the advantage of flight is undisputed, the case is not as clear for osteoderms.
The most obvious potential would be for defence – protecting the animal from injuries. However, osteoderms may serve a far broader purpose.
In crocodiles, for example, they help with heat regulation, play a part in movement, and even supply calcium during egg-laying. It is the interplay of these poorly understood functions that has long made it difficult to pinpoint how and why osteoderms evolved.
Sand monitors, also known as sand goannas, are widespread through most of Australia. Ken Griffiths/Shutterstock
A cutting-edge technique
To help resolve this enigma, we had to go back to the beginning.
Surprisingly, to date science has not even agreed on which species have osteoderms. Therefore, we assembled an international team of specialists to carry out the first large-scale study of osteoderms in lizards and snakes.
We studied specimens from scientific collections at institutions such as the Florida Museum of Natural History, the Natural History Museum in Berlin, and Museums Victoria.
However, we soon learnt that this came with challenges. Firstly, the presence of osteoderms can vary dramatically between individuals of the same species. Secondly, there is no guarantee that osteoderms are sufficiently preserved in all specimens.
Most importantly, they are buried deep within skin tissue and invisible to the naked eye. Traditionally, finding them meant destroying the specimen.
Instead, we turned to micro-computed tomography (micro-CT), an imaging technique similar to a medical CT scan, but with much higher resolution. This allowed us to study even the tiniest anatomical structures while keeping our specimens intact.
Micro-CT-based, computer-generated 3D model of Rosenberg’s goanna (Varanus rosenbergi), with the left half showing osteoderms and endoskeleton. Roy Ebel
Using computer-generated 3D models, we then digitally explored the bodies of lizards and snakes from all parts of the world. Incorporating data from prior literature, we processed almost 2,000 such samples in our search for osteoderms.
To illustrate our results, we devised a technique called radiodensity heatmapping, which visually highlights the locations of bone structures in the body.
For the first time, we now have a comprehensive catalogue showing where to find osteoderms in a large and diverse group; this will inform future studies.
Radiodensity heatmapping shows newly discovered osteoderms (yellow to red) in the limbs and tail of the Mexican knob scaled lizard (Xenosaurus platyceps). Roy Ebel
Not just anatomical curiosity
What we found was unexpected. It was thought only a small number of lizard families had osteoderms. However, we encountered them nearly twice as often as anticipated.
In fact, our results show nearly half of all lizards have osteoderms in one form or another.
Our most astonishing finding concerned goannas. Scientists have been studying monitor lizards for more than 200 years. They were long thought to lack osteoderms, except in rare cases such as the Komodo dragon.
So we were all the more surprised when we discovered previously undocumented osteoderms in 29 Australo-Papuan species, increasing their overall known prevalence five times.
Examples of newly discovered osteoderms (magenta) in Australo-Papuan monitor lizards. Roy Ebel
This isn’t just an anatomical curiosity. Now that we know Australian goannas have osteoderms, it opens up an exciting new avenue for further studies. This is because goannas have an interesting biogeographic history: when they first arrived in Australia about 20 million years ago, they had to adapt to a new, harsh environment.
If osteoderms in goannas showed up around this time – possibly owing to new challenges from their environment – we’d gain crucial insights into the function and evolution of these enigmatic bone structures.
Not only may we just have found the key to an untold chapter in the goanna story, our findings may also improve our understanding of the forces of evolution that shaped Australia’s unique reptiles as we know them today.
Roy Ebel receives funding from the Australian Government’s Research Training Program.
Spurred on by hashtags and usernames indicating these feats involve steroids, soon Mark is online, ordering his first “steroid cycle”. No script, no warnings, just vials in the mail and the promise of “gains”.
A few weeks later, he’s posting progress shots and getting tagged as #MegaMark. He’s pleased. But what if I told you Mark was unknowingly injecting toxic chemicals?
In our new research we tested products sold in Australia’s underground steroid market and found many were mislabelled or missing the expected steroid entirely.
Even more concerning, several contained heavy metals such as lead, arsenic and cadmium. These substances are known to cause cancer, heart disease and organ failure.
What are anabolic steroids, and who is using them?
Anabolic steroids are synthetic drugs designed to mimic the effects of testosterone. Medical professionals sometimes prescribe them for specific health conditions (for example, hypogonadism, where the body isn’t making enough sex hormones). But they are more commonly taken by people looking to increase muscle size, improve athletic performance, or elevate feelings of wellbeing.
In Australia, it’s illegal to possess steroids without a prescription. This offence can attract large fines and prison terms (up to 25 years in Queensland).
Despite this, they’re widely available online and from your local “gym bro”. So it’s not surprising we’re seeing escalating use, particularly among young men and women.
People usually take steroids as pills and capsules or injectable oil- or water-based products. But while many people assume these products are safe if used correctly, they’re made outside regulated settings, with no official quality checks.
For this new study, we analysed 28 steroid products acquired from people all over Australia which they’d purchased either online or from peers in the gym. These included 16 injectable oils, ten varieties of oral tablets, and two “raw” powders.
An independent forensic lab tested the samples for active ingredients, contaminants and heavy metals. We then compared the results against what people thought they were taking.
More than half of the samples were mislabelled or contained the wrong drug. For example, one product labelled as testosterone enanthate (200mg/mL) contained 159mg/mL of trenbolone (a potent type of steroid) and no detectable testosterone. Oxandrolone (also known as “Anavar”, another type of steroid) tablets were sold claiming a strength of 10mg but actually contained 6.8mg, showing a disparity in purity.
Just four products matched their expected compound and purity within a 5% margin.
But the biggest concern was that all steroids we analysed were contaminated with some level of heavy metals, including lead, arsenic and cadmium.
While all of the concentrations we detected were within daily exposure limits regarded as safe by health authorities, more frequent and heavier use of these drugs would quickly see people who use steroids exceed safe thresholds. And we know this happens.
If consumed above safe limits, research suggests lead can damage the brain and heart. Arsenic is a proven carcinogen, having been linked to the development of skin, liver and lung cancers.
People who use steroids often dose for weeks or months, and sometimes stack multiple drugs, so these metals would build up. This means long‑term steroid use could be quietly fuelling cognitive decline, organ failure, and even cancer.
What needs to happen next?
Heavy metals such as lead, arsenic and cadmium often contaminate anabolic steroid products because raw powders sourced from some manufacturers, particularly those in China, may be produced with poor quality control and impure starting materials. These metals can enter the supply chain during synthesis, handling, or from contaminated equipment and solvents, leading to their presence in the final products.
Steroid use isn’t going away, so we need to address the potential health harms from these contaminants.
While pill testing is now common at festivals for drugs such as ecstasy, testing anabolic steroids requires more complex chemical analysis that cannot be conducted on-site. Current steroid testing relies on advanced laboratory techniques, which limits availability mostly to specialised research programs such as those in Australia and Switzerland.
We need to invest properly in a national steroid surveillance and testing network, which will give us data‑driven insights to inform targeted interventions.
We also need to see peer‑led support through trusted programs to educate people who use steroids around the risks. The programs should be based in real evidence, and developed by people with lived experience of steroid use, in partnership with researchers and clinicians.
Timothy Piatkowski receives funding from Queensland Mental Health Commission. He is affiliated with Queensland Injectors Voice for Advocacy and Action as the Vice President. He is affiliated with The Loop Australia as the research lead (Queensland).
Australia has joined 28 international partners in calling for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and a lifting of all restrictions on food and medical supplies.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong, along with counterparts from countries including the United Kingdom, France and Canada, has signed a joint statement demanding Israel complies with its obligations under international humanitarian law.
The statement condemns Israel for what it calls “the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians” seeking “their most basic need” of water and food, saying:
The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths. The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity […] It is horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.
Weapon of war
Gazans, including malnourished mothers denied baby formula, face impossible choices as Israel intensifies its use of starvation as a weapon of war.
In Gaza, survival requires negotiating what the United Nations calls aid “death traps”.
According to the UN, 875 Gazans have been killed – many of them shot – while seeking food since the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operating in late May. Another 4,000 have been injured.
Gaza has been described as the “hungriest place on Earth”, with aid trucks being held at the border and the United States destroying around 500 tonnes of emergency food because it was just out of date.
More than two million people are at critical risk of famine. The World Food Programme estimates 90,000 women and children require urgent treatment for malnutrition.
Nineteen Palestinians have starved to death in recent days, according to local health authorities.
We can’t say we didn’t know
After the breakdown of the January ceasefire, Israel implemented a humanitarian blockade on the Gaza Strip. Following mounting international pressure, limited aid was permitted and the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operations.
As anticipated, only a fraction of the aid has been distributed.
About 1,600 trucks entered Gaza between May 19 and July 14, well below the 630 trucks needed every day to feed the population.
Israeli ministers have publicly called for food and fuel reserves to be bombed to starve the Palestinian people – a clear war crime – to pressure Hamas to release Israeli hostages.
Famine expert Alex De Waal says Israel’s starvation strategy constitutes a dangerous weakening of international law. It also disrupts norms aimed at preventing hunger being used as a weapon of war:
operations like the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation are a big crack in these principles [that is] not going to save Gaza from mass starvation.
Palestinian organisations were the first to raise the alarm over Israel’s plans to impose controls over aid distribution.
UN Relief Chief Tom Fletcher briefed the UN Security Council in May, warning of the world’s collective failure to call out the scale of violations of international law as they were being committed:
Israel is deliberately and unashamedly imposing inhumane conditions on civilians in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Tom Fletcher briefing the United Nations on the ‘atrocity’ being committed in Gaza.
Since then, clear and unequivocal warnings of the compounding risks of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing have intensified from the UN, member states and international law experts.
Weaponising aid
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation claims it has handed out millions of meals since it began operating in the strip in May. But the UN has called the distribution model “inherently unsafe”.
Near-daily shootings have occurred since the militarised aid hubs began operating. Malnourished Palestinians risking death to feed their families are trekking long distances to reach the small number of distribution sites.
While the foundation denies people are being shot, the UN has called the aid delivery mechanism a “deliberate attempt to weaponise aid” that fails to comply with humanitarian principles and risks further war crimes.
Jewish Physicians for Human Rights has rejected the aid’s “humanitarian” characterisation, stating it “is what systematic harm to human beings looks like”.
Human rights and legal organisations are calling for all involved to be held accountable for complicity in war crimes that “exposes all those who enable or profit from it to real risk of prosecution”.
Mounting world action
Today’s joint statement follows growing anger and frustration in Western countries over the lack of political pressure on Israel to end the suffering in Gaza.
Polling in May showed more than 80% of Australians opposed Israel’s denial of aid as unjustifiable and wanted to see Australia doing more to support civilians in Gaza.
Last week’s meeting of the Hague Group of nations shows more collective concrete action is being taken to exert pressure and uphold international law.
Th 12 member states agreed to a range of diplomatic, legal and economic measures, including a ban on ships transporting arms to Israel.
The time for humanity is now
States will continue to face increased international and domestic pressure to take stronger action to influence Israel’s conduct as more Gazans are killed, injured and stripped of their dignity in an engineered famine.
This moment in Gaza is unprecedented in terms of our knowledge of the scale and gravity of violations being perpetrated and what failing to act means for Palestinians and our shared humanity.
Now is the time to exert diplomatic, legal and economic pressure on Israel to change course.
History tells us we need to act now – international law and our collective moral conscience requires it.
Amra Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Australia has joined 28 international partners in calling for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and a lifting of all restrictions on food and medical supplies.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong, along with counterparts from countries including the United Kingdom, France and Canada, has signed a joint statement demanding Israel complies with its obligations under international humanitarian law.
The statement condemns Israel for what it calls “the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians” seeking “their most basic need” of water and food, saying:
The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths. The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity […] It is horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.
Weapon of war
Gazans, including malnourished mothers denied baby formula, face impossible choices as Israel intensifies its use of starvation as a weapon of war.
In Gaza, survival requires negotiating what the United Nations calls aid “death traps”.
According to the UN, 875 Gazans have been killed – many of them shot – while seeking food since the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operating in late May. Another 4,000 have been injured.
Gaza has been described as the “hungriest place on Earth”, with aid trucks being held at the border and the United States destroying around 500 tonnes of emergency food because it was just out of date.
More than two million people are at critical risk of famine. The World Food Programme estimates 90,000 women and children require urgent treatment for malnutrition.
Nineteen Palestinians have starved to death in recent days, according to local health authorities.
We can’t say we didn’t know
After the breakdown of the January ceasefire, Israel implemented a humanitarian blockade on the Gaza Strip. Following mounting international pressure, limited aid was permitted and the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operations.
As anticipated, only a fraction of the aid has been distributed.
About 1,600 trucks entered Gaza between May 19 and July 14, well below the 630 trucks needed every day to feed the population.
Israeli ministers have publicly called for food and fuel reserves to be bombed to starve the Palestinian people – a clear war crime – to pressure Hamas to release Israeli hostages.
Famine expert Alex De Waal says Israel’s starvation strategy constitutes a dangerous weakening of international law. It also disrupts norms aimed at preventing hunger being used as a weapon of war:
operations like the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation are a big crack in these principles [that is] not going to save Gaza from mass starvation.
Palestinian organisations were the first to raise the alarm over Israel’s plans to impose controls over aid distribution.
UN Relief Chief Tom Fletcher briefed the UN Security Council in May, warning of the world’s collective failure to call out the scale of violations of international law as they were being committed:
Israel is deliberately and unashamedly imposing inhumane conditions on civilians in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Tom Fletcher briefing the United Nations on the ‘atrocity’ being committed in Gaza.
Since then, clear and unequivocal warnings of the compounding risks of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing have intensified from the UN, member states and international law experts.
Weaponising aid
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation claims it has handed out millions of meals since it began operating in the strip in May. But the UN has called the distribution model “inherently unsafe”.
Near-daily shootings have occurred since the militarised aid hubs began operating. Malnourished Palestinians risking death to feed their families are trekking long distances to reach the small number of distribution sites.
While the foundation denies people are being shot, the UN has called the aid delivery mechanism a “deliberate attempt to weaponise aid” that fails to comply with humanitarian principles and risks further war crimes.
Jewish Physicians for Human Rights has rejected the aid’s “humanitarian” characterisation, stating it “is what systematic harm to human beings looks like”.
Human rights and legal organisations are calling for all involved to be held accountable for complicity in war crimes that “exposes all those who enable or profit from it to real risk of prosecution”.
Mounting world action
Today’s joint statement follows growing anger and frustration in Western countries over the lack of political pressure on Israel to end the suffering in Gaza.
Polling in May showed more than 80% of Australians opposed Israel’s denial of aid as unjustifiable and wanted to see Australia doing more to support civilians in Gaza.
Last week’s meeting of the Hague Group of nations shows more collective concrete action is being taken to exert pressure and uphold international law.
Th 12 member states agreed to a range of diplomatic, legal and economic measures, including a ban on ships transporting arms to Israel.
The time for humanity is now
States will continue to face increased international and domestic pressure to take stronger action to influence Israel’s conduct as more Gazans are killed, injured and stripped of their dignity in an engineered famine.
This moment in Gaza is unprecedented in terms of our knowledge of the scale and gravity of violations being perpetrated and what failing to act means for Palestinians and our shared humanity.
Now is the time to exert diplomatic, legal and economic pressure on Israel to change course.
History tells us we need to act now – international law and our collective moral conscience requires it.
Amra Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: United States Senator for Washington State Patty Murray
The Army recently announced that 29 museums will be closed or consolidated, including the Lewis Army Museum at JBLM
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, sent a letter to U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, demanding answers as to why the Lewis Army Museum at Joint Base Lewis McChord (JBLM) will be closed, and shared how important the museum is for celebrating the rich history of military service at JBLM. The Lewis Army Museum is the only certified U.S. Army Museum on the entire West Coast.
The Army recently announced that 29 museums will be closed or consolidated, in order to direct more resources toward “readiness and lethality,” the list includes the Lewis Army Museum at JBLM. The Army Museum Enterprise provided no explanation when it announced it will shrink from 41 museums at 29 locations, to 12 field museums and four training support facilities at 12 locations.
Senator Murray began her letter by detailing the storied history of the soldiers the museum honors, “JBLM is named after Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark expedition and was established in 1917 to train the 91st ‘Wild West’ Division before deploying to Germany in World War I. Since then, JBLM soldiers have continued to serve bravely in all military conflicts. JBLM is home to Audie Leon Murphy, who earned fame as the most highly decorated American Soldier of World War II , and General John Shalikashvili, who later became the 13th Chairman on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. JBLM is full of rich history that deserves to be celebrated, not brushed to the side.”
“Educating our communities on the Army’s history is key to instilling national pride amongst servicemembers and the general public,” Senator Murray continued. “In fact, Secretary Hegseth has been very vocal about preserving our military’s history for the sake of improving morale. In the dedication of his book, Modern Warriors, Hegseth said ‘the legacy of our warriors is worth of elevation – a reflection of what we should really value.’ By closing the Lewis Army Museum, you are doing the exact opposite by not honoring the incredible sacrifice and service the men and women who have been stationed at JBLM have provided. You have said that ‘telling that story [of the Army] will directly lead to a recruiting boom,’ and there seems to be no better way to continue to tell that story than to continue to keep these important museums open to the public.”
Senator Murray concluded her letter by pushing for answers and emphasizing that JBLM was never consulted or given the opportunity to provide input if this decision was made to cut costs, writing: “According to the U.S. Army Center of Military Housing, the decision was made as a cost-cutting measure so the Army can direct more resources toward ‘readiness and lethality’ and will save $114 million over 10 years. Yet this decision comes at a time when President Trump is requesting a historically high defense budget of $1.01 trillion for fiscal year 2026, a 13.4 percent increase compared to fiscal year 2025. If this decision was made for cost-saving measures, JBLM was never consulted or given the opportunity for input. Colonel Kent Park, the outgoing garrison commander, said he heard of the closure through the media, and the closure was never discussed with him.”
Full text of the letter is available HERE, and below:
The Honorable Daniel Driscoll
Secretary of the Army
1600 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-1600
July 21, 2025
Dear Secretary Driscoll:
I am writing to express my concern and disappointment regarding the Army’s decision to shut down and consolidate 29 of its 41 military museums across the country, including the Lewis Army Museum, which honors the soldiers of Joint Base Lewis McChord (JBLM) in my home state of Washington. JBLM is named after Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark expedition and was established in 1917 to train the 91st “Wild West” Division before deploying to Germany in World War I.Since then, JBLM soldiers have continued to serve bravely in all military conflicts. JBLM is home to Audie Leon Murphy, who earned fame as the most highly decorated American Soldier of World War II, and General John Shalikashvili, who later became the 13th Chairman on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. JBLM is full of rich history that deserves to be celebrated, not brushed to the side.
In 1973, JBLM established the Lewis Army Museum to honor its soldiers and educate the public on the value of service. Located in the Red Shield Inn, the building was originally built during World War I by the Salvation Army to accommodate soldiers and their families and it was converted into a museum in 1973. Today, the Lewis Army Museum is the only certified U.S. Army Museum on the entire West Coast. It has an extensive display spanning from decorated artillery shells made in the trenches during World War I to pocket guides given to servicemembers before they deployed to Vietnam. It also showcases military vehicles, vintage uniforms, weapons, art, and other memorabilia donated by local veterans in the Puget Sound area.
Educating our communities on the Army’s history is key to instilling national pride amongst servicemembers and the general public. In fact, Secretary Hegseth has been very vocal about preserving our military’s history for the sake of improving morale. In the dedication of his book, Modern Warriors, Hegseth said “the legacy of our warriors is worth of elevation – a reflection of what we should really value.” By closing the Lewis Army Museum, you are doing the exact opposite by not honoring the incredible sacrifice and service the men and women who have been stationed at JBLM have provided. You have said that “telling that story [of the Army] will directly lead to a recruiting boom,” and there seems to be no better way to continue to tell that story than to continue to keep these important museums open to the public.
According to the U.S. Army Center of Military Housing, the decision was made as a cost-cutting measure so the Army can direct more resources toward “readiness and lethality” and will save $114 million over 10 years. Yet this decision comes at a time when President Trump is requesting a historically high defense budget of $1.01 trillion for fiscal year 2026, a 13.4 percent increase compared to fiscal year 2025. If this decision was made for cost-saving measures, JBLM was never consulted or given the opportunity for input. Colonel Kent Park, the outgoing garrison commander, said he heard of the closure through the media, and the closure was never discussed with him.
JBLM’s community is proud of its history and continued service to our nation and our servicemembers. Without an explanation given for this announcement, I request comprehensive answers to the following questions before August 11, 2025:
What is the annual operating cost of the Lewis Army Museum?
What processes and evaluations did the Army undertake to inform the decision to close the Lewis Army Museum?
What is the plan to provide the Army Veterans located on the West Coast with a museum honoring their service to the nation?
Why was the Lewis Army Museum chosen to close and other military museums allowed to remain open?
What do you plan on doing with the artifacts in the Lewis Army Museum? Will the public still be able to see them somewhere after closure?
Was there a public comment period on the planned museum closure decision? If so, what was the timeline and what feedback did the Army receive from the community?
How is the Army planning to use the additional funds to enhance mission readiness and lethality?
Are there specific programs that will absorb the additional funding? If so, which ones?
Thank you for your attention to this important matter, and I look forward to your prompt and thorough response.
Source: United States Senator for New Mexico Martin Heinrich
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) released the following statement on voting against the 2026 Intelligence Authorization Act:
“The Intelligence Committee has an important obligation to ensure our intelligence agencies operate within the bounds of the law and respect the constitutional rights of Americans. At a time when the Trump Administration is defying the rule of law and undermining the very protections our Constitution guarantees, robust Congressional oversight is more important than ever.
“While the 2026 Intelligence Authorization Act includes some provisions aimed at accountability, it falls far short. Instead of strengthening independent oversight, it weakens the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, effectively endorsing this Administration’s arbitrary purges of career intelligence professionals. It also fails to address the current DNI’s documented missteps, including the blatant politicization of intelligence under her leadership. And I have deep concerns about matters raised — or ignored — in the classified annex.
“Our Intelligence Community should never be handed a blank check, especially under an Administration that has shown such disregard for democratic norms and the rule of law.”
Source: United Nations General Assembly and Security Council
The following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the ministerial segment of the high-level political forum on sustainable development, in New York today:
This year’s high-level political forum arrives at a time of profound challenge — but also real possibility. Despite enormous headwinds, we have seen just in the last two months what can be achieved when countries come together with conviction and focus.
We saw it in Geneva, where the World Health Assembly adopted the Pandemic Agreement — a vital step toward a safer, more equitable global health architecture. We saw it in Nice at the third UN Ocean Conference, where Governments committed to expand marine protected areas and tackle plastic pollution and illegal fishing.
And we saw it in Sevilla at the fourth International Financing for Development Conference, where countries agreed on a new vision for global finance — one that expands fiscal space, lowers the cost of capital, and ensures developing countries have a stronger voice and participation in the organizations that shape their future.
These are not isolated wins. They are signs of momentum. Signs that multilateralism can deliver. Signs that transformation is not only necessary — it is possible. And that is the spirit we bring to this high-level political forum.
This forum is about renewing our common promise — to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all. We also recognize the deep linkages between development and peace.
We meet against the backdrop of global conflicts that are pushing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) further out of reach. That’s why we must keep working for peace in the Middle East.
Over the weekend in Gaza, we saw yet more mass shootings and killings of people seeking UN aid for their families — an atrocious and inhumane act which I utterly condemn.
We need an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the immediate release of all hostages, and unimpeded humanitarian access as a first step to achieve the two-State solution. We need the ceasefire between Iran and Israel to hold. We need a just and lasting peace in Ukraine based on the UN Charter, international law and UN resolutions.
We need an end to the horror and bloodshed in Sudan. And the list goes on, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Somalia, from the Sahel to Myanmar.
At every step, we know sustainable peace requires sustainable development. The Sustainable Development Goals are not a dream. They are a plan. A plan to keep our promises — to the most vulnerable people, to each other, and to future generations. People win when we channel our energy into development.
Since 2015, millions more people have access to electricity, clean cooking, and the internet. Social protection now reaches over half the world’s population — up from just a quarter a decade ago. More girls are completing school. Child marriage is declining. Women’s representation is growing — from the boardrooms of business to the halls of political power.
But we must face a tough reality: Only 35 per cent of SDG targets are on track or making moderate progress. Nearly half are moving too slowly. And 18 per cent are going backwards.
Meanwhile, the global economy is slowing. Trade tensions are rising. Inequalities are growing. Aid budgets are being decimated while military spending soars. And mistrust, division and outright conflicts are placing the international problem-solving system under unprecedented strain. We cannot sugarcoat these facts. But we must not surrender to them either.
The SDGs are still within reach — if we act with urgency and ambition. This year’s forum focuses on five critical Goals: health, gender equality, decent work, life below water, and global partnerships. All are essential. All are interconnected. All can spur change across other goals.
On health, COVID-19 exposed and deepened inequalities — and today, far too many people still lack access to basic care. We know what works. We must boost investment in universal health coverage, rooted in strong primary care and prevention, reaching those furthest behind first.
On gender equality, gaps remain wide. Women and girls face systemic barriers — from violence and discrimination to unpaid care and limited political voice.
But we also see growing momentum: from grassroots movements to national reforms. Now is the time to turn that momentum into transformation — with rights-based policies, accountability, and real financing into programmes that support inclusion and equality for women and girls.
On decent work, the global economy is leaving billions behind. Over 2 billion people are in informal jobs Youth unemployment is stubbornly high. But we have tools to change this.
The Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection is helping countries invest in expanded social protection initiatives, skills training, and the creation of sustainable livelihoods — including in growing industries like clean energy.
Tomorrow, I will deliver an address on the enormous opportunities of the renewables revolution. The upcoming World Summit on Social Development can help spur further progress.
On life below water, our ocean and the communities that count on it are paying the price of overfishing, pollution, and climate change. We must deliver on the commitments of the Nice Ocean Conference — to protect marine ecosystems and support the millions who depend on them. And, finally, on global partnerships — SDG 17 — we need to strengthen all the elements that can support progress.
This means investing in science, data, and local capacity. And harnessing digital innovation — including artificial intelligence — to accelerate progress, not deepen divides.
Throughout, we must recognize the need to reform the unfair global financial system, which no longer represents today’s world or the challenges faced by developing countries.
We must ensure a reform for developing countries to have a stronger voice and greater participation to help advance the Sustainable Development Goals on the ground.
The Sevilla Commitment that emerged from the Conference on Financing for Development includes important steps: Through new domestic and global commitments that can channel public and private finance to the areas of greatest need.
By increasing the capacity of Governments to substantially mobilize domestic resources, including through tax reform. And by establishing a more effective framework for debt relief and tripling the lending capacity of multilateral development banks to the benefit of developing countries.
In the coming year, we must keep building. We must strengthen and scale up partnerships that deliver — including with the private sector and civil society organizations and local authorities.
We must embed long-term thinking into every decision, as we committed in the Declaration on Future Generations. And we must continue to learn from each other.
Voluntary national reviews — the backbone of this forum — are more than reports. They are acts of accountability. They are journeys of self-discovery as countries develop and build. And they are templates for other countries to follow and learn from.
By the end of this high-level political forum, we will have surpassed 400 reviews — with over 150 countries presenting more than once. That is a powerful signal of commitment. A clear demonstration that solutions exist and can be replicated and expanded.
With five years left, it’s time to transform these sparks of transformation into a blaze of progress — for all countries. Let us act with determination, justice and direction. And let’s deliver on development — for people and for planet.
Planning is underway for recovery work on state highways in the top of the South Island.
The region’s highways have taken a battering from two recent bad weather events, with key routes in Nelson/Tasman and Marlborough affected.
Mark Owen, Regional Manager for the Lower North Island/Top of the South, says some areas have suffered significant damage and will need substantial repairs.
“On the Tākaka Hill, we have two slip sites and a slump site that will need remedial work. We expect single-lane stop/go traffic management to remain in place on the hill until the end of the year.”
There are also scour, slip, and washout repairs needed on State Highway 6 from Belgrove to Kohatu, and an underslip site at Coal Creek near Owen River that needs to be fixed.”
“We also have work to do in Nelson. Everyone is well aware of the recent closures of State Highway 6 Rocks Road and the slips on this road. We are working on a long-term solution that will see new retaining works done along the top of the cliff face,” Mr Owen says.
SH6 Rocks Road slip site.
And he says work is also required in Marlborough, particularly on State Highway 63 through the Wairau Valley.
“Here, the most pressing task is the washout at Andersons Bridge. Although there are also road repairs needed west of the Waihopai Bridge where the highway has suffered flood scouring.”
Mr Owen says it is essential people realise these are areas which are likely to have ongoing work for some time.
“We are still working through the details – getting geotechnical and site assessments completed and working on designs and solutions.”
“Once these are finalised, we will be able to share more details about how long specific sites will be affected, and how long people can expect to experience travel delays while repairs are completed. We will keep the community updated,” Mr. Owen says.
He warns disruptions and delays will be ongoing.
“Our contractors will work as hard as they can to complete projects as quickly as they can. But it is important people appreciate the top of the South has experienced three major rain events in quick succession.”
“The damage caused will take time to fix. We are talking months, not weeks,” Mr Owen says.
Affected state highway sites, top of the South Island
Location
Damage
SH60 Tākaka Hill
Slump site at Drummond’s Corner, underslip site, and underslip/overslip site
SH6 Rocks Road
Slip site
SH6 Kohatu
River scour site
SH6 Spooners Saddle
Slip and fallen trees sites
SH6 Norris Gully
River/stream scour site
SH6 Coal Creek
Underslip site
SH63 Wairau Valley
Andersons Bridge washout, road scour west of Waihopai Bridge
Mr Owen says there are areas, like the scour site on State Highway 6 at Kohatu, that will have temporary repairs in place ahead of permanent work later on.
“For the highway at Kohatu, a full road rebuild is planned for our upcoming state highway summer maintenance season. It means there will be a temporary road surface in place ahead of that happening.
“To be effective and durable, road rebuilds have to be done during warmer and drier weather. So, we can’t get this section of State Highway 6 fully rebuilt over winter and early spring,” Mr Owen says.
General advice
Drivers can expect road works at multiple locations on state highways across the top of the South Island over the coming months. These will create travel delays, and road users must allow extra time for their journeys.
NZTA/Waka Kotahi strongly encourages people to check road conditions before they travel.
